


Poetry

by Kallonimo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: No beta we die like archival assistants, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Other, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29063976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kallonimo/pseuds/Kallonimo
Summary: Statement of Charlotte Addams, regarding an encounter with a strange book of poetry belonging to one Martin K. Blackwood. Statement recorded directly from subject.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	Poetry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashes_and_Kites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashes_and_Kites/gifts).



> I don't even read TMA fic what the hell...
> 
> I stumbled over this headcanon by @Ashes_and_Kites (ashes-in-a-jar) on Tumblr and it just really made me want to write my own fic. Thank you so much for letting me use your idea!

Statement of Charlotte Addams, regarding an encounter with a strange book of poetry belonging to one Martin K. Blackwood. Statement recorded directly from subject.

So, uh…where do I start? I was born…no kidding, kidding, that’s a bit too far.

I’ve always loved poetry. It just…I don’t know it speaks to me in a way prose never quite did. The way you can hide meaning in verse and how it takes on entire new meaning depending on how and when and by who it is performed. There’s just a few more layers to it. 

I got into poetry slam as a teenager, it was perfect for me, really. Perfect combination of my love for poetry and the more…competitive side of me. You have to be a good performer and really need to be able to think on your feet too. I am good at the performing bit, everyone always called me a natural, but the quick thinking…not so much. I often only think of the best way to phrase something hours, days, sometimes weeks later and it really started irking me. I never seem to find the right words just in the moment. 

I remember this one time…I was in a competition with a like…social justice mental health theme and I was really really struggling to find the words for what I needed and I remembered this other slam I heard some time ago, where this girl…she personified her fear, gave it a name and treated it as a person and I used that, just a little bit. I wrote a poem where I made different mental illnesses into people and talked to all of them and it worked. I won. 

From then on, I started noting down things, other people’s things, that I heard or read at slams, just little turns of phrase or metaphors I liked. I never copied whole poems. Never whole poems. Just…their ideas. Listen I know that sounds bad, but I really made them my own. There is a line between inspiration and stealing and I promise I never crossed it. Never. 

But that’s all…that’s not what you want to hear. You want to hear about the book. 

I know this place, your Institute, you know. Well, from the outside. I walk past it every day on my way to uni. I never paid it much mind to be honest. I know what kind of stuff people say about you but…more things in heaven and earth right?

Anyway one morning I walk past here and I trip on something. A notebook, just lying out there in the street. I wanted to bring it inside I really did but…it was open and I saw it had poems in it and…I had a big slam coming up and I was nearly out of material and…I took it. I knew it was wrong, but I took it. Just thought that I could pick out the stuff I could use and give it back later. 

Believe me, I felt even worse when I noticed I’d forgotten it. I’d put it in my bag, gone to class and forgotten all about it. Even gone to my slam on the weekend, lost it, without even thinking of the book. I only found it again when I was cleaning out my backpack a few weeks later. I felt so guilty I wanted to bring it back right away but…It was in the evening and I was still out of material…so I took out my own notebook and I started reading. 

The first page just had the name of the owner on it. Martin K. Blackwood. And honestly Martin if you work here and you read this…I’m sorry I took your book, but also. What the hell dude. Yeah, anyway…

First poem was about like…London at night. Nothing really useful. Kind of…aggressively mediocre. Sorry Martin. It was kind of funny though I heard a car honking outside the same moment I read something about the “Symphony of Cars”, but you know…city….the honking kind of never stops so I thought what a funny coincidence it was.  
The next one was weirder…it was comparing different types of tea to emotional states and I…I swear I tasted some of them, but I kind of just chalked it up to my imagination. Took notes on a few of the comparisons. 

It continued like that, just mildly mediocre stuff, but one of the poems was about …. someone. Poem addressed them as you… lyrical speaker was lamenting about how “you” wasn’t paying attention to them and telling “you” they could see behind their walls. Standard stuff again, except this time I felt…watched. I kept turning around, thinking there was someone behind me, but of course there wasn’t. I live in student accommodation, but I’m the only one who can get into my room. I never even talked to the other people on my floor much, I live…as solitary as I can. I always liked it that way. 

I was kind of happy when I had finished reading it, didn’t even take any notes cause I wanted to get through it but the next one was…worse.

It…I’m not into the habit of reading too much into someone’s work but…Martin if that was based on anything…. The lyrical speaker was talking about being locked in, shut in, not able to leave. It was really intense, and I kept tasting peaches. I know for a fact it were peaches. I hate peaches. 

By that point I was so uncomfortable, I just wanted to go to sleep and bring the book to your institute in the morning. But there was also only one poem left and the last one had actually been really good, so I thought…you know. Why not read just that last one? 

The moment I started reading it I…. felt…sad. It was about isolation and depression and it got to me. I read through the whole thing, took a few notes and when I looked up again… my room was gone. My desk and the chair I was sitting on were still there but…everything else was just…. void. White, foggy, void. I got up and…the chair disappeared too. And the desk. Only the book stayed. Martin’s poems. 

I walked around trying to find the rest of my room, but it wasn’t there. I thought I was dreaming, started pinching myself and when it didn’t hurt, I thought…fine I’ll just wake up, but I didn’t and normally in lucid dreams…you can change things…right? But I couldn’t. I was just…still in the void. 

I ran around…. wanting to find a way out but….there was nothing. And the only “marker” was the book just…lying there on the ground. I don’t know how long I was there. How many hours, but I…I couldn’t get out. I kept screaming and raging and running around and I just… couldn’t get out. 

At some point I started talking to myself. First just…you know “You can do this. You will make it out of here”, just to hear something. And when I didn’t know I what to say I started reciting. I told you I am a good performer and I used that to… fill the space, I guess. I recited my own work, other poems, songs, just everything that came into my head. All the while still walking around, looking for an exit.

I didn’t find one, but at some point, I saw Martin’s book again. That was kind of impossible, I had been walking straight in the same direction for a while, but it was there again. I walked past it, still loudly yelling the lyrics to some Adele song I’d heard on the radio. The way I saw It, that book had gotten me here and I wasn’t gonna touch it again. But then It kept appearing and I kept walking past it. And it kept appearing. I kicked it once. It slid a few metres into the void and I walked in the opposite direction, but soon enough it lay in front of me again. 

I kept ignoring it for a bit more but… I was running out of material. I’d recited everything I could think of, most of it several times. And I thought…what more can that thing do to me. I’m already in its weird foggy nightmare dimension. At least if I taste peaches, I feel something.

So, I recited Martin’s poems. First few, nothing happened. I didn’t hear the cars, didn’t taste the tea…but once I got to the “you” one I felt watched again. I almost cried with happiness cause…at least it felt like there was someone else there. 

The peaches one tasted just as bad as I remembered. Even worse. That’s when I actually did start crying. And the last one…it shook me, really. I felt all of it all the pain and sadness and loneliness…I started sobbing. Just curled up on the floor and sobbed and screamed, till I heard a knock and I was back in my dorm room with one of the girl’s from my hall banging on my door asking if I was okay. 

So uh…yeah that’s my…that’s what happened. I lost the book, it wasn’t in my room anymore, sorry if, you know maybe I dreamt the whole thing but…. I thought I should at least tell you what happened to it. If Martin works here. I don’t know if he does really, could have just lost his book on the street…

Anyway If there is nothing else you need from me…. yeah bye. I got a date.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)


End file.
